slitting

I made a stop collar for my lathe tailstock. The final step was to slit the piece. When I did that, the part collapsed and clamped down on the slitting saw. The gap ended up about half the saw thickness. Apparently there was some built-in stress in the material (12L14). I see this in wood...

I’m new to machining but I’ve already got some jobs to do with the old Comet milling machine we just got at our shop. A guy who owned a machine shop two blocks down sold his business and we got the Comet, a surface grinder, and a bunch of end mills. We’ve got everything set up and I just spent...

On an upcoming project I need to make a 1.5" long slot in a 1.5" thick hunk of 6061 aluminum. The bad news is I don't have the tooling yet for slotting. The slot will be 3/16 wide x 1.5" long and 1.5" deep. Ideas I have come up with are to use a sawzall with some kind of a Rube Goldberg guide...